Polymer emulsions have been extensively used in the coating and adhesive industry because they are more environmentally friendly than their solvent counterparts. Meanwhile, there is also increasing interest in developing hybrid polymeric materials based upon combinations of different polymers because the resulting materials may exhibit superior properties as compared to the properties of their individual component polymers.
In general, latex particles made from sequential processing steps may exhibit a wide range of morphologies. The particular morphology and/or structure achieved are the result of a number of complex interactions between the thermodynamic and kinetic aspects of the emulsion polymerization process.
Significant efforts have been made over the decades to balance the adhesion-cohesion in waterborne pressure sensitive adhesives with few successes. Specifically, the conventional approaches are not sufficient to expand the “classical behavior” of a waterborne pressure sensitive adhesive where the adhesion performance is improved at the expense of cohesion, or vice versa.
Therefore, a need remains for new polymer emulsions using a particular seed component for polymerization, and particularly for polymerization of acrylic and methacrylic monomers. A need also remains for new polymerization strategies using the polymer emulsions.